And Hercules had the whole "going to hell to save your love" thing way back in the original Greek, so that's nothing new.

Hercules didn't go to hell to save his loved one, but as part of repentance for killing her. He was a strong demi-human, who was resented by Kings and Gods for his awesomeness. Hercules most famous accomplishment was atoning for his mistakes, not denying them. Megra died, Herc then cried, and did 12 labors to atone, and was granted Godhood for his efforts. Favored son of Zeus indeed.

Ah, yeah, I knew there was a difference between the movie and the myth, but I'm not up on my Greek histories at all.

Different Character Tropes.
This was one of the appeals for early anime fans. they were confronted with new (then) Character archetypes.

The Sensei: including: a) the dirty old indestructible wise man, b) the Combat ace (who usually dies to make room for the hero) c) the 'Big Brother' (when combined with the combat ace it's as clear a marker that you're gonna die as wearing a red shirt while working for Gene Rodenberry)

The sympathetic villain. The idea that maybe the other guy wasn't just blindly evil but rather just not acting in accordance with the HERO's interests.

Of course recent anime I think is trying to break those boundaries much as an earlier poster suggested that the east and the west are learning from each other.

Lelouch of the rebellion seems fresh to anime watchers but he's actually a classic Byronic hero. And those have been around in the west since well... Bryon's writings and include characters like the Count of Monte Christo. Sherlock Holmes might have had a touch too. though he seems to have avoided a lot of the tragedy of the trope.

This is one of the subjects I love the most, and I'm currently not energized enough to explain it in a way that makes me sound smartish like!

One of the biggest things I've noticed recently, is the prevalent "acceptance of death" in Traditional Japanese culture, and anime in general.
Huge spoiler territory subject, like all death tropes, but to put it simple.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

Remember Goku's death to Cell? How after all was said and done, Goku was going to "stay dead"?
That's part of Gohans character development. He has to accept the death of his father to move on as a character. As long as Goku was alive, Gohan couldn't be an adult/Hero.
This was compounded by Goku's not staying dead unfortunately. If Goku lived, Gohan was overshadowed and therefore, useless.

Then you have anime which pulls the "accepting death" card very well.

Katanagatari, Samurai 7, Ninja Scroll are traditional examples here, taking place back in time when this was big. There are moments in all of them that characters have to accept the death of another to move on, all major characters too, and many being killed for silly reasons.

Taking a side step, we've also got one of the most obvious differences. The "Responsibility vs Growth" mindsets.

Superman never trains to use his power, he doesn't learn how to fly better, punch harder. He learns to take responsibility for his actions, that he has power to change the world, and he should change the world. He makes moral choices.

Goku doesn't think "well, Frieza's job is selling planets to buyers, maybe he sells planets to races in need of new planets or something? Maybe he's an ass sure,but he does good work leading the galaxy" No, Frieza's evil, do 100 Push ups and kick his face in.

I'm not going to list how many shows focus on gaining strength, do that yourself.

BACK to the Death trope, because I brought up Superman. Westerners are rather unaccepting of death in comparison. Someone is going to die? Oh FUCK THAT SHIT. Everyone get in the car, we're going to bring them back to life NO MATTER WHAT. Ain't nobody stays dead in comics!
When Louis dies in the Superman Movie, what does Superman do? He TURNS BACK TIME TO BRING HER BACK.
When Meg dies in the Disney movie Hercules, what does Herc do? HE GOES TO HELL AND BRINGS HER THE FUCK BACK TO LIFE, BEING GRANTED GODHOOD IN THE PROCESS.

That's how WE work. In contrast, look at Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
At the end of TTGL, our heroes obtain the power to bring back anybody who died back to life. And believe me, a LOT of people died.
But they don't do it. In fact, they accepted the death of those who died, and think it's an insult to bring them back to life, AFTER THEY SPEND 8 EPISODES AND CROSS MULTIPLE UNIVERSES JUST TO BRING THEM BACK FROM A KIDNAPPING.
Kidnapped? Go to the end of time to save'em.
Dead? Sure I could bring them back to life, but that's not right is it?

In various series where a Main-character dies, a form of resurrection exists and was in fact, used by the bad-guys previously. Ninja Scroll's villain, Samurai 7's robot-samurai, Katanagatari's um...dude from the past who resurrected in the future(wut?)

Villains can come back to life, and that's evil.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

Bonus round

Samurai Champloo is often an East meets West mentality Anime. That's what they call it. Hip-hop Edo period dawg, we straight gangsta in japan. The two central characters, Mugen and Jin, represent each culture exclusively, while Fuu manages the balance between the two cultures.

Mugen does what he wants. He never trained a day in his life and is only strong because he wants to be. People trying to beat yah up? Pick up a sword and kill'em. Don't know how to use it? Who fuckin-cares? You're just killing people. His fuse blows at the drop of a hat, going crazy on anybody foolish enough to get in his way.
Jin spent years training and honing his sword craft. He's stoic and represents the masculine values of Japan. He has emotions, but he hides it under a stoic facade. It's a sign that he's an adult and capable of taking care of problems with logic and reason instead of emotions.

And entire episode is spent for each of them compounding why each value rocks, and why it sucks ass.
From praising Mugens determination while insulting Jin's stoicism.
To laughing at Mugen's incompetence while praising Jin's intelligence.

The show has a lot to do with the two cultures learning from each other.
The ending showcases how each one learned from the other to succeed in their present.

Jin's final battle would result in his death, the man he faces, being traditionally Japanese to a fault, explains to him why Samurai are a dying breed and why he's going to die, being very Genre Savvy here. Jin survives the battle ONLY because of defying his death, despite reason or logic, like Mugen had throughout the series.
Mugen himself had to stop being emotionally wild, he had to calm down and think clearly instead of forcing things the way he likes to.
They act like each other and shit.

Those are things of culture in anime I like to talk about. There ain't no point in talking about culture if you don't compare it to someone else's culture! Thats what I think anyways.

That's an interesting point you brought up; the notion that the Japanese society is more accepting of death.

You've made me realized that the heroes in Naruto don't try to bring the dead back to life, but the villains in Naruto do bring the dead back to life--it's as if bringing people back to life is the equivalent of evil.

There's nothing wrong with comparing Asian literature to Western literature... I think they're very different because of cultural differences and your comparison made your point clearer. As I read through your post, I kept thinking of the Western novel Frankenstein...

That's an interesting point you brought up; the notion that the Japanese society is more accepting of death.

You've made me realized that the heroes in Naruto don't try to bring the dead back to life, but the villains in Naruto do bring the dead back to life--it's as if bringing people back to life is the equivalent of evil.

There's nothing wrong with comparing Asian literature to Western literature... I think they're very different because of cultural differences and your comparison made your point clearer. As I read through your post, I kept thinking of the Western novel Frankenstein...

I say not that Japanese society is more accepting, but Japanese culture is about accepting. Differences see?

I've got another one to bring up. Cultural attitudes.

For those old enough to remember .Hack//Sign (It's too young to be old school, too old to be known well enough) Remember the main character Tsukasa?

For those not in the now, or in need of a refresher. Kid's a prick. Take Shinji Ikari. Now replace everyone who as an ass to him with someone nice, caring, intelligent, socially ok(They ain't perfect) and have them go out of their way to try and improve his life.
Now make Shinji even more apathetic. He doesn't care. About you, your life, your mom, breakfast, bagels...nothing. Thats the character we're dealing with here.
Now to make maters worse, remove 90% of the action in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Replace it with more dialogue. That's .Hack//Sign in a nutshell.
Tsukasa is an asshole. He acts like a spoiled brat. Everything you say to him, he responds with "I dunno" or "So what?" Did he do something wrong? Trying to tell him what he did wrong? Hissy fit. The kid went out of his way to act like he never cared about anything. I don't know why, but it pissed me off. I love the show to death, even back then, but thats what I put up with.

Now, lets throw a Japanese cultural spin on things.

Tsukasa is trying to act "manly". Masculine traits in japan are more inline with the classic Samurai school of thought. A man shows no emotion. He treats serious matters as tho they're the slightest of problems, worthy of joke instead of thought. They also treat the smallest inconvenience with absolute seriousness. By being in control of your emotions, you prove you're capable of the task at hand. You're acting all Spock like, with them Vulcan traits. You do things logically DESPITE your emotions. A key thing in many Samurai movies is the main character being emotional, then having a tragic event remove that emotion from him(Gurren Lagann, Samurai 7) so that he "attempts" to be apathetic towards something, but isn't doing it quite right. You need to HAVE emotion and IGNORE IT. That's the sign of a true man.

This fits in nicely with Tsukasa's eventual background reveal. The character is just a child/high schooler afterall. The entire adult thing was a failed facade/act, very apparent throughout the show. What looked like a whiny bitch being an ass for no reason to me originally, became a slightly complex character.

The eventual background reveal was a slap in the face to me. It was straight out of nowhere! It's like if they revealed in the last episode of SAO, that SAO was actually an elaborate board game the whole time. Does that make sense to you? NOOOOOOO.

Having the cultural information however, I no longer insult the .Hack//sign ending. Everything lead up to it's conclusion in one way or another. Every horrible character trait was a dressed in universe. If Tsukasa ignored responsibilities, he got punished. If he acted tough, he messed up and got hurt. That was the point. His character was flawed, and it was up to the people around him to save him(if they can take a moment to stop talking about how they named their characters...altho if SAO had such an episode that'd be awesome as all hell.

I really like .Hack//Sign by the way. IF we could somehow combine .Hack//sign with SAO, we'd be fantastic. Think about it. .Hack//sign is often sooooooooo absurd in it's detailed tragic characters, massive world, and focus on dialogue. But it's overdone plot, lack of action, and tendency to end it's anime with "aaaah Bitch! Go buy the games! What year is it? 2013? $50 bucks at Walmart for 1 of the games, IT'S A PS2 GAME AND IT'S SELLING AT WALMART FOR 50 BUCKS, AND IT'S PART 3, NOT PART 1...OOOH NO IF I COULD FIND PART 1, I'DA PLAYED IT"
Where was I? Yeah um...

SAO's strengths and weaknesses combined with .Hack's strengths and weaknesses....it's like the perfect union.

And why the hell was Asuka's game name her real name? Whats up with that? Can't make up a good fantasy name here? Or would you rather pleasure yourself to a real name?
Put some god damn effort into it!

No, I kid- to an extent...
If we're talking culture.......how about the culture festival?

I'm too sure if it's a cultural theme, but the rich girls almost always reveal a good portion of their foreheads and have that annoying laugh that seems like a bad imitation of a British royal's laugh.

Part from a lot of Japanese culture there's a lot of European culture.

Not that European culture comes as a surprise, considering our European ancestors have repeatedly tried to take over the world one way or another. Like the crusades, the robbery of American soil and genocide against its natives, Napoleon and Hitler. And in all the aforementioned attempts they spread their culture across the globe.

And as if all the death and destruction wasn't enough, now we got these guys---- and whatever dignity we had left... these guys are just picking at it, like a scab, like a bad wound that will never close, like really, just beating at that fraction of dignity, making it vanish, like *poof* smoke, like a dream, into thin air.

Part from a lot of Japanese culture there's a lot of European culture.

Not that European culture comes as a surprise, considering our European ancestors have repeatedly tried to take over the world one way or another. Like the crusades, the robbery of American soil and genocide against its natives, Napoleon and Hitler. And in all the aforementioned attempts they spread their culture across the globe.

And as if all the death and destruction wasn't enough, now we got these guys---- and whatever dignity we had left... these guys are just picking at it, like a scab, like a bad wound that will never close, like really, just beating at that fraction of dignity, making it vanish, like *poof* smoke, like a dream, into thin air.

Spoiler Alert! Click to show or hide

What abut Africa? You know, the colossal continent who's countries are for some reason shaped in perfectly reasonable squares?
It's like someone drew a map of Africa, and several super-powerful countries drew lines on the map to decide who's get what piece of the African pie......

That said, I'll say Japanese culture is among the least influenced of all cultures, at least as of the current day.
Japan was an isolationist country with no profitable resources. They want to be left alone, and you have nothing to do there. Europe fought and fought for China, Africa, Inida, the Americas....but Japan's a small island that produces Fish. They buy shit from China and stay by themselves, wooop dee-doo.

It wasn't until America came barging in that they had to rethink Isolationism, AND they moved towards a very Nazi/Fascist/Imperialistic culture. Japan turned from "Be alone" to "IF we want to be alone, we should take over everybody else, and the key to that is Japanese pride"
This shows through with the Uniforms and it's military symbolism. It shows through with the fact that deep into WW2, Japanese officers generally had an abundance of Katana's and other warrior weapons.
Japan kept using it's Katana's and other warrior weapons LOOOONG after European nations moved on. I'll say Europe was easily 300 years ahead of Japan. Europe in 1400 had better tech than Japan at the start of the 1800's....or so I'll say

Europes Bastard Sword and the Katana were both created around 1400. The Bastard sword was created essentially due to the tech of Europe. With the creation of stronger Platemail armor, the need for a shield was diminished. A longer, more 1v1 style sword had become more appropriate. You don't need a shield to protect your leg's, your body, armor does this for you. Bucklers themselves are a higher form of Shield, since Plate protected the rest of the body, you could use a Bucklers as a bashing or entrapping weapon, instead of just a defensive block.

Back to Japan however. Europe got rid of the Sword, replaced it with the gun, then forgot about the sword, only to create a new sword and style based around "Remember when Swords were a thing? Lets make it a sport" which is partially where we get Fencing.

Japan....still used the Katana. Part of the reason Katanas are so cool, is we didn't forget about them. They have that stylized edge that only a Nation with so limited resources, so poor a place, that they had to over-compensate for it's failures.
Katana's are basically shitty lumps of shitty metal smithed so well that it'll work just barely, but only enough to sharpen one edge.

Japan is more influenced by how different everybody is, than say, how America is based off Europe.
Europes so cool, because they're so different. Good thing Japan's not worth anything and never got forcibly controlled..originally.